Below is a partial list of achievements by the team at the Autism Research Centre:
2015-2020:
2020: Launching the fundraising campaign for the Cambridge Autism Centre of Excellence (ACE), a national centre that will bring together excellence in autism research with excellence in clinical, health and employment support, to serve autistic people and their families
2020: The Wellcome Trust funds Spectrum 10K, to understand how genetic and environmental factors combine to lead to different health outcomes and wellbeing in autistic people
2020: Discovering a genetic overlap between systemizing and autism
2019: Discovering the role of elevated prenatal estrogens in autism
2018: Conducting the largest ever study of sex differences in the mind (over half a million people, along with 36,000 autistic people)
2017: Identifying a partly genetic basis to cognitive empathy
2017: Professor Baron-Cohen gives the keynote speech at the United Nations in New York on Autism Awareness Day, on the topic of Autism and Human Rights
2016: Raised awareness about autism and employment (BBC2 Employable Me)
2015: Demonstrating oxytocin increases eye-contact in autism
2015: Identifying elevated fetal steroid hormones in children who later develop autism
2011-2014:
2014: First meta-analysis of typical sex differences in brain structure
2014: Molecular genetic study links mathematical ability and autism
2013: Confirming GABRB3 as a key gene in autism
2013: Identifying synaesthesia is more common in autism
2013: Opening of the Chitra Sethia Autism Centre, Cambridgeshire
2012: Linking prenatal testosterone to regional gray matter volume and functional activity in the brain
2012: Development of ‘red flags’ for autism (short AQs)
2012: Elevated rates of autism linked to an information technology-rich city (Eindhoven)
2011: Zero Degrees of Empathy (Penguin) published
2005-2010:
2009: Establishing autism as 1% of the population
2009: Linking elevated prenatal testosterone to autistic traits
2008: Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts (OUP) published
2007: The Transporters (DVD) published
2006: Demonstrating the benefits of emotion recognition teaching
2006: The ‘Assortative Mating/hyper-systemizing’ theory of autism published
2005: The Extreme Male Brain theory published (Science)
2005: Linking prenatal testosterone to social development and narrow interests
2000-2004:
2004: ‘Prenatal Testosterone in Mind‘ (MIT Press) published
2003: Mind Reading DVD for teaching emotion recognition
2003: The Empathy Quotient (EQ) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ) published
2003: The Essential Difference (Penguin) published
2003: Discovering amygdala lesions impair ToM
2002: The prenatal testosterone theory of autism published link
2002: The ’empathizing-systemizing (E-S)’ theory of sex differences link
2002: Linking prenatal testosterone to eye-contact and vocabulary development
2002: The ‘extreme male brain‘ (EMB) theory of autism published
2002: Prevalence of Asperger Syndrome in childhood reported as 1 in 166
2001: Dimensionalizing autistic traits on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) link
2001: Linking mathematical talent to autistic traits
2001: Understanding Other Minds (Second edition)(OUP)
2001: The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test – Revised published
2000: Establishment of the Cambridge Lifespan Asperger Syndrome Service (CLASS)
2000: Discovering neonatal sex differences in social interest
2000: Population study of the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (CHAT)
1995-1999:
1999: Establishing the rate of Tourette Syndrome in autism
1999: The amygdala theory of the brain basis of ToM in autism published link
1999: Reliability of early diagnosis of autism established
1998: Superior attention to detail in autism demonstrated link
1997: Teaching children with autism to mind-read (Wiley) published
1997: Discovering the broader autism phenotype identified in parents
1997: Discovering autism is linked to parents or siblings who are high ‘systemizers’
1997: The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test published
1995: Mindblindness (MIT Press) published
1990-1994:
1994: Discovering the role of the orbito-frontal cortex of the brain in theory of mind
1993: Understanding Other Minds (OUP) published
1992: Lowering the age of diagnosis of autism to 18 months old in ‘baby sibs’ using the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (CHAT)
1985-1989:
1989: Joint-attention recognized as a key developmental precursor to ToM
1989: The ‘specific developmental delay’ hypothesis of autism
1987: Pretend play and joint attention deficits in autism demonstrated
1985: The ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) hypothesis of autism